Can't add a lot to the info about diagnosis for AS, but as an adult that has it, I find some of this info is sometimes useful to help a school to understand about it and what needs to happen:
For most people, their brain can cope with sight, sound, touch, smell and taste all at the same time. It?s a bit like one of those extension leads where you have lots of different ?sockets? to plug each of your senses into, so you can see things, hear things, touch things, and your brain works out how to cope with each one and how to balance it all.
Mine only has one ?electric socket? for all of those senses. So I can either see, hear, smell something, taste something or feel something. My brain can try to do two or three of them at once, like when I?m talking with people, but it?ll start to overload the brain's wiring. If I do all of them at once, it's SO difficult to cope with, my brain tries to shut down so it can cool down a bit, and it's very unpleasant to experience. If I can't shut down, I'll have to get cross with people who won't let me, as it hurts so much. As an adult, I can control what sort of 'cross', but a child can't.
My brain has learned to avoid all this as much as possible, by learning over and over again what will happen in a situation, so it can ?switch off? senses it doesn?t need at that moment. That?s why people with Asperger syndrome repeat things over and over, and can seem quite deaf at times, or not see something, or walk into things or drop things ? those senses are ?switched off? at the time to make room for the other ones. It takes most of our life for our brains to know enough to get all that switching right, and sometimes we just can?t switch the plugs round fast enough. It's like having tele with no sound, or sound with no tele. and if you plug both in, the tele doesn't work at all or you get a load of static on it. The anger from a child is the 'static'.
It doesn?t help that we don?t have any good brain-wiring to the face-recognising stuff in our brains, or the body-language stuff, so we can?t recognise people or guess their mood. Or know the right thing to say unless we learn it. It also doesn't help that we take things so literally, so if you say "take a seat", we'll probably pick it up and wonder where to take it to.
We learn by carefully watching and copying, so we learn which senses we need, when. That only happens with age, and if someone has a high enough IQ to cope with it. It might take a long time to learn enough for me to do this really safely each time.
That?s why a supporter is needed to sit with me if I'm doing something new or different. I need someone whose senses are all working all the time, and who knows what they?re doing, and who knows what I can?t do yet. That way I can copy them and learn from them, and if I?ve managed to ?switch off? the wrong thing, they?ll know I?m not being rude and will be able to help explain to others.
In a possible emergency:
If it goes wrong for me, I will go very very quiet. Children may react with anger or screaming or running about wildly.
Unfortunately, helping us in a crisis where we've got overloaded from too much noise, smell, taste, texture, sound etc is exactly the opposite of helping an 'ordinary' person. If possible....
? Do not make eye contact
? Do not touch us unless you have to.
? Do not ask questions or chat to us unless we talk first. (This is all going to be difficult! It?s all the opposite of First Aid training!)
? Help us get to sit somewhere safe and quiet in silence for a while, not a room with flickering fluorescent lights or machinery working in it (to see if I can get some ?emergency power? to our brains back on again).
? An idea is to look for a heavy coat or blanket, and put that round us. The pressure from it actually helps to stop some of the overload (but hugging us often doesn?t have that same effect at all - don?t ask me why, no clue really).
Summary: We can only do one thing at a time, and trying to take in loads of info about the world around us all at once is possibly hell. The school needs to understand and to help a child to cope with it as best they can.